The ramblings of a population biologist stumbling along the road to Academia.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Bad Math for Bad Politics

Mark at Good math, bad math has a great post about some bad math being used by a political pundit. Number at risk is at least as important as the number of events, in this case, unfortunately deaths.Quoting Mark:

"And as an aside, I've got to say, the image of Rush Limbaugh holding an American flag while trying to diminish the magnitude of the sacrifice made by American soldiers in this foolish war is deeply, deeply sickening. Give our soldiers the respect they deserve for the kinds of sacrifices they're making: what they're doing is a whole lot harder and more dangerous than anything any of us do in our normal lives. To pretend that the deaths of these people - not to mention the deaths of all of the innocent Iraqi's - is the equivalent of getting into a car accident is disgraceful."